Hey, recently I’ve been browsing r/thinkpad alot and have been a part of the ThinkPad craze. I’ve noticed that lots of people, especially on that subreddit, still use Dual-Core CPUs, and deem them as more than capable, or enough.
I’ve been in the US for almost 5 years now, but I used to live in Brazil back in 2019. I’ve never owned a laptop with a quad-core CPU if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 8GB of RAM (except on a Desktop) before moving here. I’ve grown accustomed to having a decent laptop, and desktop while living here, as well as a up-to-date phone, etc.

I’m curious to know what are people’s thought on older CPUs and usability of older hardware. I currently own a laptop with an i7 6th gen, which is Dual-Core and 8gbs and it really doesn’t get any attention, be it for watching youtube or doing online, browser-related study or just reddit browsing.

I couldn’t really picture myself using anything that doesn’t have 16GB Ram, and 4 cores, and preferably not freezing or having slowdowns, but after considering moving back to Brasil, and knowing the situation, especially for tech, since everything is harder to obtain and wayy more expensive, I’ve started question myself how many people are still using dual-core systems, that are happy with it and don’t see anything wrong with that.

I’d like to give the old X1 Carbon 4th gen another try and see how much my view could change. I know hardware has been getting a little cheaper in some ways and quad-core and higher CPUs have been popular for a few years, but I’m not sure that it’s still accessible to everyone as I’d like to think.

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Thanks in advance!

  • DevAnalyzeOperate@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    A major problem with them is that most dual core chips floating around lack 4k h.264 hardware decode. So it’s easy to basically bring the computer to its knees by selecting the wrong thing on YouTube. The lack of modern video codec decode in general in MOST dual cores tends to make these computers frustrating for the modern internet.

    Generally, they obviously aren’t fast and I’d generally recommend an upgrade, but the computers are perfectly usable. Especially if you just want to use an old laptop with a nice screen and keyboard for something like writing. It’s hilariously more important to have an SSD than it is to have a quad core.

    You would want to run a lightweight linux distribution like lubuntu. It’s basically your only choice. Win11 will bring dual core machines to their knees.